Tag: power

The reason I created the Brand Love Curveis that I wanted to find a unique way to talk about the emotional bond I was seeing between brands and consumers.

I first came up with the idea when I was in charge of a Marketing department that had 20 different brands all operating at various levels of success. Honestly, it was hard for me to keep track of where each brand was and I did not want to apply one-size-fits-all type strategies to brands that had different needs. Sure I could have used some of the traditional tools such as Boston Consulting Group matrix with market share versus category growth rates, or I could have looked at various other dimensions related to revenue size, margin rates, competitive advantage or various other metrics.

The beauty of the Brand Love Curve is that it starts with the most important part of the brand: THE CONSUMER. Everything in Marketing has to start and end with the consumer in mind. It assesses the brand’s performance solely on how tightly connected consumers are with your brand. The more connected the brand, the easier it was to Market. It commanded more power and generated more profit.

When I looked at my own portfolio of brands, I started to noticed that the biggest difference was how tightly connected some brands were with their consumer. I started to refer to the poor performing brands as “indifferent” where consumers did not really care about the brand and then I called the best brands “beloved” because consumers were emotionally engaged. I started to see the difference. I could clearly see that brands with a stronger bond had it easier and that almost everything on those brands was better. Launches of new products were easier because consumers were more accepting. Retailers gave these brands preferential treatment because they knew their consumers wanted them. My own people were more excited to work on these brands, thinking it was a career advancement to get the chance to be part of the beloved brand. I could see that beloved brands had better share results, better consumer tracking scores and in many cases better margins. It was easier to get price increases through. It seemed that everyone in the organization cared about these beloved brands. My agencies bragged about the work they did on these beloved brands. As I kept exploring this idea, the idea of the Brand Love Curve came to me and I started to map where each our 20 brands sat on this hypothetical curve. As the consumer start with a new brand, they were indifferent, then they started to like it, then loved it, and finally it would become a beloved brand. The goal becomes to move along the curve towards the beloved status.

As I worked with the Brand Love Curve, I started to see the link between where the brand sat on the curve and our strategy choices available, we started to see there was a difference in the balance of rational and emotional benefits, which impacted our advertising and media planning. I could start to see how the Brand Love Curve could really drive every part of how we manage the brand. The goal became how do we move the brand along the curve because as we discussed in the previous section, if brand love helps your brand become more powerful and profitable, then any degree of added love was a good thing.

At the beloved stage, the brand becomes iconic that is famous and highly regarded with consumers.

Consumers become equal to fans, similar to fans of sports teams or celebrities. They become outspoken, possessive and will defend the brand at any point. The brand becomes a self expression of the consumers, a ritual or favorite part of the day. People have conversations about these brands, whether on social media or at the lunch table. The emotional connection becomes so strong, that consumers feel more and think less. Demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become blind to pure logic and deaf to rational product based competitors. These brands have strength on every part of the robust brand funnel, near perfect awareness levels, high purchase intentions, high repeat and high loyalty. Voice of the customer is very strong, and the brand listens to ensure they are attacking any weakness before it can be exploited. The brand has a big idea, with every consumer touch point easily tying back and re-enforcing the big idea. The brand has a sense of power and uses it quietly against all stakeholders from consumers to competitors and retailers, while leveraging it with key influencers and media. The brand is driving every lever of their profit statements to continue strong sales growth and healthy margins, driving price premiums, lower costs, higher market shares and leveraging the core base of brand fans to enter new categories.

The most beloved brands we have tracked includes Apple, Starbucks, Nike, Google and Mercedes. In a sense, these brands are flawless in their strategy and execution—fully respected, desired and cherished, while wielding the power in the marketplace to create extremely profitable and valuable brands. Some of the world’s newest challengers for beloved brands status includes Uber, Whole Foods, Netflix, Beats by Dre and Tesla. Impressed by how fast they have risen in the market, but not yet flawless, only time will tell if they can survive near the top.

Staying at the top is just as hard as getting there. Just ask former beloved brands that have fallen from grace, including Blackberry, Gap Clothing, Kodak, Cadillac or Benneton.

The 5 ways that Beloved Brands fall from grace

Beloved Brands forget who they are and what it was that made them famous.Benetton is great example of a brand who forgot what made them famous. In 1990, Benetton could do no wrong. Business schools wrote case studies of their success and Ad Agencies held them up as the brand of envy for all clients to learn from. They had shock-value advertising campaigns that people talked about at the lunch table and there was a Benetton store in every mall. Their colorful and stylish fashion was the desire of the core teenage crowd. Benetton’s brand promise was providing European fashions at an affordable price. But the arrogance of the “can do no wrong” brand quickly faded. While they were so busy creating shock-value advertising and arrogantly talking of their brand as it were art itself they forgot about the fashion part of the business. Benetton started to look like a hollow promise of cool ads with not-so-cool clothing. Also, Benetton expanded so broadly and so fast, they opted for franchises instead of maintaining ownership over the distribution. The managing of the large franchise network became a drain on the company and there’s a belief that not being close to the consumers in the stores hurt their ability to listen to what teenagers were saying and wearing. With a fickle teenage target, Benetton quickly went from a must-have to a has-been brand.

Brands that struggle to keep up with the times.The Beloved Brands of General Motors–Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Corvette–not only peaked in the 1970’s, but found themselves stuck their as well. The 70’s were one of those decades with such a distinct look with Disco, perms, gold chains and the 3-piece suit, that most things connected to the 70’s were completely rejected in the 1980’s. A brand like Cadillac was the ultimate luxury brand, so revered that people would describe the best brand of any category as “it’s the Cadillac of….” but that has since been replaced by “it’s the Mercedes of…..” Cadillac’s unit sales peaked in 1973 just as gas prices began to rise and the look of those huge gas-guzzlers. It no longer fit the desires of the Yuppies of the 1980’s who were now opting for sleeker luxury with Mercedes and BMW. The Corvette brand had done a nice job transitioning from the 50’s of James Dean through the 60’s and 70’s, always remaining as an icon of sophisticated American cool. But Corvette failed to update their 1970’s brand look until 1984, which was too late to escape the stigma and giggles of those who looked at the drivers as having a “mid-life crisis”. Consumers of the 80’s were now driving smaller and sleeker sports cars like the RX7, 280Z and later on the Miata. And finally, the Oldsmobile was a classic American family car who sales soared through the 1970’s. By the mid-80’s, in an effort to try to capture a new generation, they used the infamous tagline of “Not your father’s Oldsmobile” which only re-enforced that it WAS your father’s Oldsmobile. I believe that the near-bankruptcy of General Motors can be traced back to the 1970’s when the brands peaked and yet felt stuck in a time-warp forever. GM failed to keep up in design, and failed to change as gas prices rose dramatically. They found themselves attacked on the lower end from the Japanese cars like Toyota and Honda and at the higher end from German brands like Mercedes, Porsche, Audi and BMW.

They make the wrong strategic choices because they think of themselves before the consumer.Gap Clothing got greedy and forgot what made them great: trendy American fashion for a stylish generation at a reasonable price. And who is the spokesperson for fashion: the coolest people on earth: TEENAGERS of course. Every generation of Teens believes they are the most important people on earth and they want products that speak for their generation. It’s all about them. They influence Music, Movies, TV Shows and Clothing and believe each has to speak directly to them and for them. Imagine being 15 in the late 90’s, you’re walking in your favorite mall, trying to be as cool as can be, heading for your favorite clothing store. All of a sudden, you look up and your favorite clothing brand is now flanked by BABY GAP on one side and GAP MATERNITY on the other side. How could this brand speak for the teen generation, when your 2-year-old nephews are wearing a mini-version of what you’re wearing or your pregnant Aunt is wearing the stretchy version? GAP made the mistake of putting their name on all their line extensions, which most fans of Master Brands thinks strengthens the brand but it actually runs the risk of actually weakening the brand. GAP also forgot about feeding that desire for leading edge, trendy clothing–the whole reason for that “8 seasons” rotation of inventory. Go into a GAP store this year, and you’ll realize how boring and drab the products have become. No teenager today loves GAP or even thinks much about GAP. They are totally indifferent. Fast forward to 2011, GAP Clothing sales are down 19% this year and down over 25% since the peak of 2005. They have just announced the closing of 200 stores–which will continue the downward spiral.

If you are Afraid to attack yourself, expect an attack from someone else.Kodak was such a revered brand for so long, but their refusal to attack themselves opened up so many windows of attack from others. The first attack came in the traditional film business from low-priced Fuji film. Kodak did nothing to stop Fuji for fear of eroding their margin, letting Fuji gain a 17% share of the film market. The second attack came from new entrants into the digital camera market before Kodak was ready to enter. Even though Kodak had the first digital camera as early as 1975, the product was dropped internally for fear it would threaten Kodak’s photographic film business. In 1990 Kodak finally laid out a plan to enter the digital camera market but took another decade to enter the market. The world was changing, yet Kodak executives still could not fathom a world without traditional film which gave them little incentive to deviate into the digital camera space. The third attack came once Kodak entered the digital camera space. Kodak entered at the high-end of the market and for a brief moment was the #1 digital camera. But Kodak failed to recognize how quickly the digital camera market would become commoditized. They did cut their prices, but couldn’t lower their cost of goods fast enough to keep up with the Japanese manufacturers. Kodak was losing $60 for every camera sold at the same time as their traditional film business was dying. The result: Bankruptcy. Interestingly enough, at the time of their bankruptcy, Kodak released 1000’s of patents for sale. It’s not a question of innovation that killed Kodak, it’s a refusal to act on the right innovation in a timely fashion. They failed to attack themselves only to let others attack and ultimately destroy them.

Lose focus and let the experience slide.A recent case study in a brand experience not living up to expectations is the Blackberry. It’s a classic case where they grabbed early share as the category innovator and then forgot to keep making improvements to the overall experience. The list of problems for blackberry is long: major service outages, keyboard that sticks, small screen size, bad cameras, poor quality speaker-phone, slow internet browser and when the screen freezes you have to take the battery out and re-boot. In my last few months as an angry blackberry user, I was taking the battery out 5x a day. The leaders at RIM believed they were invincible almost laughing when Apple launched the iPhone. These guys would next launch a tablet without any Apps on it. Oh man! What I think Blackberry’s biggest failure is not mapping out the customer experience and attacking every possible weakness. It’s a classic case of technology first and then thrust it into the marketplace and hope it sells. The blackberry experience has just not kept pace with Android and Apple. As a result, the RIM share price is down 95% since its peak of 2008.

Maintaining beloved brand status

Focus on maintaining the magic and love the brand has created with the core brand fans. Focus most of your attention on those who love you the most. Treat them special. Listen to your consumer, giving them a voice at the table, with the brand being responsive as it can. Market the Big Idea, sell the innovation and the experience. Continue to invest in product innovation and brand experience. Leverage both into telling the overall brand story, using the big idea to push the marketing effort in two separate layers: tell the master brand story about the big idea and the related experience, tell the specific product innovation stories linking how they support and build on the brand’s big idea.

Perfect the experience: For those who love the brand, it is no longer just about the product, it becomes about the experience. Build a culture and organization around the brand that will keep finding new ways to surprise and delight consumers. Perfect every possible touchpoint with the consumer. Attack the brand before it can be attacked by others: The biggest competitor for these brands is the brand itself. The constant goal has to be about getting better. Any degree of complacency will set the brand up for future attacks. Never become complacent or these brands will be replaced by challenger brands wanting to achieve the beloved status.

Broaden the offering and broaden the audience: Take advantage of your brand’s loyal following to launch peripheral products that build on the routine. Capture more share of wallet of your most loyal consumers.To ensure you are a brand that goes beyond the current generation of consumers, begin thinking about how to spread your brand to other age groups. A lot of fashion brands and restaurant brands have been trapped into the current generation and lose the status as styles change.

The most beloved brands must keep the love alive, attack yourself, and use your fans as spokespeople.

Here’s a presentation on what makes a Beloved Brand:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

The ugly truth is that too many marketers chose marketing as a career in business school because they hated accounting and finance. They were drawn to the strategy or creativity of marketing, hoping that someone else would do the accounting. But in reality, from the CEO’s point of view, the only reason marketers exist is to drive growth and profit for an organization, with a focus on ROI (return on investment) for all those creative marketing programs.

The more love you can create for your brand, the more power and profits you can generate. At Beloved Brands, it is our belief that marketers need to create more love for their brand, but not just for loves sake, but for the sake of profit. Love = Connection + Power + Profit. That bond between your brand and your consumer becomes a source of power for your brand, whether that power is with the very consumers who love your brand, versus retailers, suppliers, competitors, influencers, employees or even versus the media. Once you’re able to generate power for your brand, you can then turn that into profit, whether driving price, cost control, market share or increasing the market size.

Driving Profit

While good marketers can run brands and marketing programs. Great marketers can drive their brands P&L and deliver growth and profit for their brands. Here are eight ways the Brand Leader can drive profits:

Pricing

Trading the consumer up or down

Product Costs

Marketing Costs

Stealing other users

Getting current users to use more

Enter new categories

Create new Uses for your brand

1. Pricing

While many marketers think of price as a defensive reaction, most times to counter inflation or something happening in the trade channels, marketers should refocus and start using price as a weapon to drive Brand Value. Beloved Brands seem more capable at driving profits through pricing, but they also are careful to ensure the premium does not become excessive to create backlash.

Price Increase: You can do a price increase if the market or brand allows you. It likely has to be based on passing along cost increases. Factors that help are whether you are a healthy brand or it’s a healthy market as well as the power of your brand vs. competition and channel.

Price Decrease: Used when fighting off competitor, if you need to react to a sluggish economy or channel pressure. Another reason to decrease price is if you have a competitive advantage around cost, whether that’s manufacturing, materials or distribution.

There are watch outs for price changes. It’s difficult to execute especially if it has to go through retailers. You need to understand power relationships–how powerful are the retailers. Many times, price changes are scrutinized so badly by retailers that you must have proof of why you are doing it. It’s likely your Competitors will over-react. So your assumptions you used to go with the price increase will change right after. And finally, it’s not easy to change back.

2. Trading the Consumer Up or Down

Aside from price increases, another strategy would to create a range of products that allows you to reach up or down to a new set of consumers. You need to ensure that you are doing this for the right reason or it could backfire on you.

Trading Up: If you have a range of products, sometimes it can be beneficial to get consumers to trade up. Can you carve out a meaningful difference to create a second tier that goes beyond your current brand? Do your brand image/ratings allow it?

Trading Down: Risky, but you see un-served market, with minimal damage to image/reputation of the brand. In a tough economy, it might be better to create a value set of products rather than lower the price on your main products.

There are a few watch outs around trying to trade up or down: Premium skus can feel orphaned at retail world—on the shelf or missing ads or displays. Managing multiple price levels can be difficult—what to support, price differences etc. For all the effort you go to, make sure your margins stay consistently strong through the trading up or down. Be careful that you don’t lose focus on your core business. You can’t be all things to everyone. The final concern is what it does your Brand’s image, especially risky when trading downward.

3. Product Costs

Managing cost as a weapon to enhance the Brand’s Value. It can be either your cost of goods or the marketing costs. As marketers, we sometimes think cost is someone else’s job. But it’s an effective weapon that marketers should be utilizing.

Cost of Goods Decreases: You are able to use the power of your brand to drive power over your suppliers; you find cheaper potential raw materials, process improvement or find off-shore manufacturing.

Cost of Goods Increases: Make sure that you manage the COGs as they increase. Watch out for suppliers trying to pass along costs. But realize that with new technology, investing in brand’s improved image, going after premium markets, offering new benefit or a format change, that cost of good increases could be a reality.

The watch outs with managing costs: with cuts, make sure the product change is not significantly noticeable. You should understand any potential impact in the eyes of your consumer on your brand’s performance and image. Can the P&L cover these costs, either increased sales or efficiency elsewhere? Managing your margin % is crucial to the long-term success of your brand.

4. Marketing Costs

As marketers sometimes we get protective of the amount, hoping to have as much money as we can to carry out the activities on our priority lists. But we should be looking at marketing costs from the view point of the CEO, with a focus on making sure every program drives profit.

Marketing Cost Decrease: To counter changes in the P&L (price, volume or cost), it’s very tempting to look to short-term P&L management or look at changes in go-to-market model. Where a brand stands on the product life cycle or how loved the brand is can really impact the selling costs. Even though we think that Beloved Brands have endless spending, they actually likely have a lower investment to sales ratio.

Marketing Cost Increase: When you’re in Investment mode, defensive position trying to hold share against an aggressive competitor or when you see a proven payback in higher sales–with corresponding margins.

Always be in an ROI mindset: Manage your marketing costs as though every DOLLAR has to efficiently drive sales. Realize that short-term cuts can carry longer term impact. Competitive reaction can influence the impact of investment stance–like a price change, your competitor might over-react to your increases in spending.

5. Stealing other Users

Externally, the Share and Volume game are traditional tools for brand. Either stealing other users or getting current users to use more.

Offensive Share Gains: Use it when you have a significant Competitive Advantage or you see untapped needs in the market. Or opportunistic, use first mover advantage on new technology.

Defensive Share Stance: Hold the fort until you can catch up on technology, maintain profitability, loyal base of followers needs protecting.

Be careful when trying to gain share. A Beloved Brand has a drawing power where it does gain share without having to use attack modes. Attacking competitors can be difficult. It could just become a spend escalation with both brands just going at it. After a share war that’s not based on a substantive reasoning (eg. technology change), there might end up with no winners, just losers. Many times, the channel will try to play one competitor against another for their own gain. Watch out what consumers you target in a competitive battle: some may just come in because of the lower price and go back to their usual brand.

6. Getting Users to Use More

Going after frequency is a different strategy.

Share of Requirements: In many categories, even loyal consumers will work within a competitive set of favourite brands. A good strategy is to provide a reason (claim, experience, emotion) for loyal consumers to stay with your brand.

Get Current Users to Use More: When there is an opportunity to turn loyal users into creating a potential routine. Changing behaviours is more difficult than enticing trial. It’s a good strategy to use, when your there’s real benefit to your consumer using more. It’s hard to just get them to use more without a real reason.

There has to be a real benefit connected to using more or it might look hollow/shallow. Driving routines is a challenge. Even with “lifesaving” medicines, the biggest issue is compliance. Find something in their current life to help either ground it or latch onto. When I worked on Listerine, people only used mouthwash 20-30 times a year compared to 700+ brushing occasions. So we focused on connecting rinsing with Listerine to the twice daily brushing routine.

7. Enter New Categories

When there is an untapped or under-served need. There could be a significant changing demographic that impacts your base. Or you are able to translate/transfer your reputation to a new user group. There should be something within your product/brand that helps fuel the brand post trial. Trial without repeat, means you’ll get the spike but then bust. Substantial investment required. Don’t let it distract from protecting the base loyal users.

8. Create New Uses

Format Line Extensions that take your experience or name elsewhere. Able to leverage same benefit in convenient “on the go” offering. Make sure current brand is in order before you divert attention, funding and focus on expansion area. Investment needed, could divert from spend on base business. Be careful because the legendary stories (Arm and Hammer) don’t come along as much as we hope.

Beloved Brands drive strong sales growth, which helps the P&L work harder and more efficiently.

With all the love and power the Beloved Brand has generated for itself, now is the time to translate that into growth, profit and value. The Beloved Brand has an Inelastic Price. The loyal brand fans pay a 20-30% price premium and the weakened channels cave to give deeper margins. We will see how inelastic Apple’s price points are with the new iPad Mini. Consumers are willing to trade up to the best model. The more engaged employees begin to generate an even better brand experience. For instance at Starbucks, employees know the names of their most loyal of customers. Blind taste tests show consumers prefer the cheaper McDonald’s coffee but still pay 4x as much for a Starbucks. So is it still coffee you’re buying?

A well-run Beloved Brand can use their efficiency to lower their cost structure. Not only can they use their growth to drive economies of scale, but suppliers will cut their cost just to be on the roster of a Beloved Brand. They will benefit from the free media through earned, social and search media. They may even find government offer subsidies to be in the community or partners willing to lower their costs to be part of the brand. For instance, a real estate owner would likely give lower costs and better locations to McDonald’s than an indifferent brand. Apple get a billion dollars worth of free media, with launches covered on CNN for 2 weeks prior the launch and carried live like it’s a news event.

Beloved Brands have momentum they can turn into share gains. Crowds draw crowds which spreads the base of the loyal consumers. Putting the Disney name on a movie generates a crowd at the door on day 1. Competitors can’t compete–lower margins means less investment back into the brand. It’s hard for them to fight the Beloved Brand on the emotional basis leaving them to a niche that’s currently unfulfilled. Walk past an Apple store 15 minutes before it’s open and you’ll see a crowd waiting to get in–even when there are no new products.

Beloved Brands can enter into new categories knowing their loyal consumers will follow because they buy into the Idea of the Brand. The idea is no longer tied to the product or service but rather how it makes you feel about yourself. Nike is all about winning, whether that’s in running shoes, athletic gear or even golf equipment

Here are lessons learned for driving more profits for your brand.

Higher volume helps you exert pressure on costs. That could be supply costs, operations costs, and distribution over even media costs.

Get More for Less From the Trade. You can begin exerting power over the sales channels to your advantage–trimming variable trade costs with retailers while demanding more display, prime real estate, coop advertising and more control over pricing. ROI on trade programs.

Lower Cost of Capital: More certainty means lower risk and you can re-invest, knowing the ROI will be quicker and stronger.

Love = Power + Profit

How loved is your brand?

We believe a brand’s source of power is the emotional feelings it generates. With that power comes added profitability.

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a Brand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand. With the power of connection, the brand can leverage that power into increased growth and profits. To read more, follow this presentation.

When I was a Brand Manager and my son was in kindergarten at the time, I once said that our lives were very similar. We make stuff that we want to put on our fridge. It stuck with me because I started to look at work and wonder if it was “fridge worthy”? Would I be proud enough of this to put it up on the fridge at home. In other words, did I love it?

I’ve always stressed to my team “you have to love what you do, that has to be the benchmark on whether we approve things–do you love it?” And one day, one of my Group Marketing Directors said to me “Loving it seems a bit unrealistic, why do we have to love it? Why not just like it”. Great question. I suppose not all marketers think this way, and I’m fine with that. If you think I’m crazy, that’s fine. Stop reading. I just wish I competed with you.

If you love it, you’ll fight for it. You’ll believe in it so much, you’ll fight all the way to the top of your organization to make it happen. You’ll work harder for it. The work will inspire you and give you energy. You’ll stay up till 3am working on it. You will want to make sure it’s perfect, knowing details matter. You will inspire everyone working on the project to share your vision. If you love what you do, the consumer will know. Think of the most beloved brands, whether it is Disney, Starbucks, Apple or Ferrari and look how much energy the people working there put into the brand. In fact, show me a brand where people working there settle for good and I will show you an OK brand that struggles for its existence.

The more connectivity you have with your consumer, the more power your brand has. And with that power, comes faster growth and deeper profits. Your relationship between your brand and your consumer has to be treated like a real relationship. As Oscar Wilde said “never love anyone who treats you like you are ordinary”. In a brand sense, “if you don’t love the work you do, then how do you expect the consumer to love your brand”.

The answer for that Director of mine: “If you love your work, they will love you back.”

What gets in your way of Loving it?

Not enough Time: Oddly time forces most people to make quick approvals of things and opt for next time. My first recommendation is to build in longer time cycles so you can have room in the schedule to keep pushing for work you love. But my second recommendation is to use the pressure of time to put pressure on everyone on your team. Rather than approving work you think is OK, next time, just stare at everyone and say “yes but I just don’t love it. And I need to love it” and see if you can inspire the team to push even harder, even in the face of a deadline. I’ve always looked at deadlines as my ally and use it to my advantage to get what I want. Not to cave and settle for OK.

Risk vs Fear:The best of marketing ideas have risk to them. If you eliminate all risk, then you also eliminate any big wins. A great idea should scare you a little, but excite you a lot. Given, we see 6,000 brand messages a day, you have to find a way to stand out. To be a great brand, you must be better, different or cheaper–and that different shows up in the work that you do. Looking at the grid beside us, the obvious answer is “Good and Different”. When you are not different, it just falls flat, consumers don’t connect and they end up feeling blah about the brand. Push yourself to find a difference not in your brand’s positioning but in the brands execution. Take a chance, even if it feels risky. The middle of the road might feel safe, but it also where you find dead animals run over in the night. A great story is the lesson Steve Jobs and the color “Beige”. When Jobs was launching the original Mac back in the late 1970s, he wanted to make sure the color was different. The plastic mould company presented him with 2,200 variations of beige until he picked one. While the behavior of Jobs were obsessive, his virtues show up in his work. Would Apple be Apple if he didn’t push.

Do you care enough? If you don’t care, you should give up your desk to someone who does. I know it sounds harsh. But the role of Brand Leader is very difficult. You are competing in a finite market, with very talented people at the competition who seem to care about beating you every day. If you only sort of care, then is this really the job for you? Push yourself, find ways to inspire yourself.

Are you able to motivate partners? As Brand Leaders, we never really make anything. We think we only have one weapon which is that of decision-making. I’ve heard some Brand Leaders say, I can really only say “yes” or I can say “no” to the work that comes to my desk. That’s so not true. Your primary role is to motivate everyone who touches your brand. Not just those you directly deal with (Your team, account people at the agency or your sales people) but those who you don’t directly deal with. If someone talks about your brand at the kitchen table, then they are part of the Brand team. That means sound editors, producers or actors. As a leader if you want to motivate everyone, then make it personal. Deal with everyone on a face to face basis. Once the brief is approved, how many of you are saying, I want to take the Creative Team to lunch just to get to know them? When you walk into an edit studio, shake hands with the sound editor and stand near them. Because in this meeting, you might need them on your side. When you go to the shoot, talk to the actors directly. Make it personal. Let everyone know what you’re trying to do, how important it is to you, and how happy you are to have them on your team. That’s inspiring. Most Brand Leaders only work on one major campaign per year. But everyone on your team likely works on 40 or 60 or even 80. What are you doing to make sure that your work is the one they love the most this year? Just like our hurdle above asking you the brand leader “do you love it”, then how do you make sure everyone who touches your work shares in your love. Leadership should be called Follower-ship because it’s not about being out front, but rather when you turn around “are people following you?”

Strategy versus Execution. Execution in marketing is all about the Brand Leader’s balance between control and freedom. What I find odd is that most Brand Leaders give too much freedom where they should be exhibiting control and tries to exhibit too much control where they should be giving freedom. Brand Leaders should control the Strategy, giving very little wiggle room. And yet Brand Leaders write such broad-based strategies with a broad target, many benefits, and a long list of “just in case” reasons to believe. It’s almost as though they figure, I’ll write so many things it will give the agency options. That just means you gave up control of your strategy. You want a tight strategy, with very little wiggle. On the other hand, Brand Leaders exhibit control over the execution. “We don’t want humor, we’d like to use a popular song, we don’t like the color red and we want to make sure it doesn’t offend anyone”. The list of mandatories on the brief is long. My recommendation is that if you write a very tight strategy, you should be willing to give freedom to the execution.

The Brand Love Curve

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on aBrand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming aBeloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

As a Leader, you will find that if you have passion, people will follow. It’s inspiring and it’s contagious. Challenge yourself to set a new bench mark to love what you do. Reject OK because OK is the enemy of greatness.

Anotherarticle you might enjoy is to see how Love for your brand can translate into more power for your brand and in turn more profits. Click on: Love = Power = Profit

Love what you do. Live why you do it.

ABOUT BELOVED BRANDS INC.: At Beloved Brands, we are only focused on making brands better and making brand leaders better.Our motivation is that we love knowing we were part of helping someone to unleash their full potential. We promise to challenge you to Think Different. We believe the thinking that got you here, will not get you where you want to go. Our President and Chief Marketing Officer, Graham Robertson is a brand leader at heart, who loves everything about brands. He comes with 20 years of experience at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke, where he was always able to find and drive growth. Graham has won numerous new product and advertising awards. Graham brings his experience to your table, strong on leadership and facilitation at very high levels and training of Brand Leaders around the world. To reach out directly, email me at graham@beloved-brands.com

At Beloved Brands, we love to see Brand Leaders reach their full potential. Here are the most popular article “How to” articles. We can offer specific training programs dedicated to each topic. Click on any of these most read articles:

Ask Beloved Brands to more love for your brand or ask how we can help train you to be a better brand leader.

I remember 20 years ago when I was in business school and I learned Michael Porter’s 5 forces model as a way to understand the industry attractiveness and competitive intensity. It’s a great starting point for thinking strategically. But, by any means, I’m not an economist, academic or even analytics junkie. I’m just a simple brand guy, who sees Porter’s Model as a great starting point to assess the power of your brand. I’m not here to debate the model, just use it.

Using Porter’s Model for Brands

First of all, Brands can be anywhere from Indifferent to Like It to Love It all the way to being a Beloved Brand. They sit somewhere on a made up mythical Brand Love curve. At Indifferent, you’re basically a commodity and you are only picked when your “product” is in front of the consumer. Margins are low, price goes with the market and all off your marketing effort is around distribution and price. As you move to Like It, you become competitive but the consumer only usually picks you if they see something logical in your offering that makes you appear to fit their needs. At this point, brands should be trying to figure out: are you better, different or cheaper? Because while you might be playing in the mix of the other brands, if you’re not one of those three, then you might not be around for very long. As you get more into the Loved and Beloved stages, the consumer starts to feel more and possibly think less. You have a connection and bond with your consumer. They are a fan, your brand is becoming a favourite part of their life and they build you into their normal routines. They defend you, sell you and crave you at times.

The challenge for Brand Leaders is to start seeing that love as a source of power. And that source of power as a means to making more money than if you had no love. Marketers that “get it” see the connection between Love and Power and Profits.

Looking at Porter’s Model of the 5 Forces, we can see that a Beloved Brand can leverage all 5 forces as a competitive strategy to beat down on the less loved brands. McDonald’s beats down on Burger King, Wendy’s and Hardee’s with such a force those brands now find themselves confused and suffering.

A Beloved Brand starts with a certain power over the buyer–whether that’s consumers or the channel. In terms of CONSUMERS, they feel more and think less. It’s a part of them. They are fans, craving the brand and build it into their life. They can’t live without the brand. And the CHANNEL needs the brand, caters to them, cannot stand up to them. People would switch customers before switching brands. The channel finds themselves Powerless in negotiations. They need the brand.

Once the Beloved Brand has a power over the two main buyers–consumers and channel, they can use it over the other forces. No real SUBSTITUTES can match the Beloved Brand. It becomes less about product and more about connection and how consumer feels though the brand. You end up with a Monopoly on feelings which then takes away ability to substitute. Unless it is “better” what really can the substitute do. It is Hard for NEW BRANDSto break through. New brand starts in the rational position difficult to break the emotional bond. And SUPPLIERS are at the mercy of the brand. High volumes drive down costs and margins. Suppliers build completely around brand. Can’t get out.

The Beloved Brand commands a power over their competitors in relative terms to their competitors whether it is Buyers, Substitutes Suppliers or New Entrants. If you look at the love consumers have for a brand like Apple, you can start to see how it becomes a power. Apple uses the love to replicate the power of a monopoly.

Going Beyond Porter

Porter is a great starting point for assessing brand power. But Brands are in the midst of a huge change on a few fronts. The obvious one people can see and touch is Media. But don’t forget to look beneath the surface and you’ll start to see a bigger change in brands than media and that’s the Brand Culture and the Conversations.

There are now 5 types of media: paid, earned, social, search and home media. Back in the 1970s, it was all about advertising through PAID MEDIA, with 30 second TV, print and out of home ads. Even with Paid media, the Beloved Brand can get Better slots, lower rates and more integrations. The first social media I would argue is PR, capturing EARNED MEDIAand becoming part of the conversation at home or at the lunch table at work. A Beloved Brand is more newsworthy and their New Products are lead story. Look at the amount of positive press Apple gets from the news media. HOME MEDIAwould be how you use your home page–whether to influence or sell. For a Beloved Brand, the website can engage inform, design and sell. As part of the SEARCH process it can be the destination. For a Beloved Brand, search is a winner, because Being a famous brand beats paid SEO. For SOCIAL MEDIA, a Beloved Brand has an easier time generating social spins, where advocates follow, share and spread the news.

As we take all that influence of media, we can start to see the influence of others can have on brand choices. KEY INFLUENCERSare more likely to actively recommend a Beloved Brand they feel emotionally connected. Look how Apple uses key influencers. And what is a growing area for Brand is CONVERSATIONSand the influence of popularity on our decisions. Beloved Brands know that a line up attracts a line.

Brand = Culture. Brand and Culture are one. Advocates want to work there. Fully Engaged on Day 1. The area many brand leaders are missing is the influence of CULTUREas a source of brand power. Brand Leaders should look to Culture as an Asset to make your Brand Experience more powerful. Brand Values should come from the DNA, and act as guideposts to ensure that the behavior of everyone in the organization is set to deliver upon the Brand’s promise. Having values is one thing, but the other component of Culture is the right people leadership. Use the values to help people deliver upon the right behaviors, skills and experiences. Leaders must embody the Brand’s DNA and live by the values. Employees will be watching the Leaders to ensure they are living up to the words on the wall. Leaders need to believe that by investing in their people, the business results will come. Better people produce better work and that drives better results. Talent management means hiring the right people and providing the right training. Too many companies are skimping on training and development, which is equivalent to cutting back on your R&D.

So with these 13 sources of Power, the Beloved Brand can leverage this power to drive higher growth and deeper profits. The Beloved Brand commands a premium price, lower costs, better shares and the ability to move into new categories. Each of these drives profit for the brand.

The more LOVED the brand, the more POWERFUL the brand.

To read more on this subject, read the following presentation:

Other Stories You Might Like

How to Write a Creative Brief. The creative brief really comes out of two sources, the brand positioning statement and the advertising strategy that should come from the brand plan. To read how to write a Creative Brief, click on this hyperlink: How to Write a Creative Brief

How to Write a Brand Plan: The positioning statement helps frame what the brand is all about. However, the brand plan starts to make choices on how you’re going to make the most of that promise. Follow this hyperlink to read more on writing a Brand Plan: How to Write a Brand Plan

Turning Brand Love into Power and Profits: The positioning statement sets up the promise that kick starts the connection between the brand and consumer. There are four other factors that connect: brand strategy, communication, innovation and experience. The connectivity is a source of power that can be leveraged into deeper profitability. To read more click on the hyper link: Love = Power = Profits

You have been able to carve out a niche and be a chosen brand against a proliferation of brands in the category. And you have good shares, moderate profits and most brand indicators are reasonably healthy. It’s just that no one loves you. There’s nothing wrong with being a Liked brand. All the power to you. But just know that you might be leaving good money on the table.

Beloved = Power = Growth = Profit

The Brand Love Curve

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on aBrand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming aBeloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

With each stage of the Brand Love Curve, the consumer will see your brand differently. The worst case is when consumers have “no opinion” of your brand. They just don’t care. It’s like those restaurants you stop at in the middle of no-where that are called “restaurant”. In those cases, there is no other choice so you may as well just name it restaurant. But in highly competitive markets, you survive by being liked, but you thrive by being loved. Be honest with yourself as to what stage you are at, and try to figure out how to be more loved, with a vision of getting to the Beloved Brand stage.

The Like It Stage

At the Like It stage, the funnel is fairly strong at the top but quickly narrows at purchase and has a very weak bottom part of the brand funnel. As people see your brand as a good rational choice, they might consider it and use it, but it lacks separation from the other brands and it’s missing that emotional connection. Brands stuck here usually focus on what they do (features) and not what the consumer wants (benefits) In the funnel, you’ll see pretty strong awareness and consideration but you’ll lose out at the purchase stage and have no real repeat or loyalty at all. You’ll notice fairly high trade spend just so you can keep your share going–and you use price as a weapon to close the deal. The best strategy here is to begin to Separate Your Brand from the clutter of the market, by establishing a brand promise based on benefits–rational and emotional. A brand like Dove was at the Like It stage back in the 1990s. Only when they could shift from talking about themselves to talking about the consumers would they be able to establish more love for their brand.

Consumers see your brand as a functional and rational choice they make. They tried it and it makes sense so they buy it, use it and they do enjoy it. It meets a basic need they have. They likely prefer it versus another brand, but they think it is better, cheaper or easier to use. Or your mom told you to use it. But, consumers don’t have much of an emotional connection or feeling about the brand. Where Indifferent is really bad, you’re ordinary, which is just a little bit better. Overall, consumers see you brand in the “it will do” space.

The Five Sources of Brand Love

Under the Brand Idea are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

Why is your Brand stuck at the Like It Stage:

If your brand is stuck at Like It, look to the five sources of love to see if you have a weakness.

Protective Brand Leaders means Caution: While many of these brands at the Like It are very successful brands, they get stuck because of overly conservative and fearful Brand Managers, who pick middle of the road strategies and execute “ok” ideas. They do a bad job at either telling the story or launching new products. On top of this, Brand Managers who convince themselves that “we stay conservative because it’s a low-interest category” should be removed. Low interest category means you need even more to captivate the consumer.

We are rational thinking Marketers: Those marketers that believe they are strictly rational are inhibiting their brands. The brand managers get all jazzed on claims, comparatives, product demonstration and doctor recommended that they forget about the emotional side of the purchase decision. Claims need to be twisted into benefits—both rational and emotional benefits. Consumers don’t care about what you do until you care about what they need. Great marketers find that balance of the science and art of the brand. Ordinary marketers get stuck with the rational only. The promise stays very rational, and the execution of the brand story becomes rather bland.

New Brand with Momentum: As a new brand, you might not have found a way to use a unique brand promise to separate yourself from other competitors. Stage 2 of a new brand innovation is ready to expand from the early adopters to the masses. The new brand begins to differentiate itself in a logical way to separate themselves from the proliferation of copycat competitors. Consumers start to go separate ways as well. Retailers might even back one brand over another. Throughout the battle, the brand carves out a base of consumers.

There’s a Major Leak: If you look at the brand buying system, you’ll start to see a major leak at some point where you keep losing customers. Most brands have some natural flaw—whether it’s the concept, the product, taste profile ease of use or customer service. Without analyzing and addressing the leak, the brand gets stuck. People like it, but refuse to love it. That leak could be in the freshness or experience stage.

Brand changes their Mind every year: Brands really exist because of the consistency of the promise. When the promise and the delivery of the promise changes every year it’s hard to really connect with what the brand is all about. A brand like Wendy’s has changed their advertising message every year over the past 10 years. The only consumers remaining are those who like their burgers, not the brand. The story never gets told in a consistent manner that delivers the brand promise. It fails to catch on, so instead of just fixing the communication the brand also changes the brand promise.

Positional Power–who needs Love: there are brands that have captured a strong positional power, whether it`s a unique technology or distribution channel or even value pricing advantage. Brands like Microsoft or Wal-Mart or even many of the pharmaceuticals products don`t see value in the idea of being loved. The problem is when you lose the positional power, you lose your customer base completely. The brand with just positional power becomes complacent and lazy–with a culture that does not create a brand experience that surpasses the promise.

Brands who capture Love, but no Life Ritual: There are brands that quickly capture the imagination but somehow fail to capture a routine embedded in the consumers’ life, usually due to some flaw. Whether it’s Krispy Kreme, Pringles or even Cold Stone, there’s something inherent in the brand’s format or weakness that holds it back and it stays stuck at Loved but just not often enough. So, you forget you love them. The strategy of linking the brand’s promise to the other connection points of the brand.

Indicators that you’re at the Like It Stage

Low Conversion to Sales. While the brand looks healthy in terms of awareness and equity scores, the brand is successful in becoming part of the consumer’s consideration set, but it keeps losing out to the competition as the consumer goes to the purchase stage. It usually requires a higher trade spend to close that sale which cuts price and margins.

Brand Doesn’t Feel Different: A great advertising tracking score to watch is “made the brand seem different” which helps to separate itself from the pack, many times speaking to the emotional part of the messaging.

Stagnant Shares: Your brand team is happy when they hold onto their share, content to grow with the category.

High Private Label Sales: If you only focus on the ingredients and the rational features of the product, the consumer will start to figure out they get the same thing with the private label and the share starts to creep up to 20% and higher.

Why would you want to get to the Love It Stage

As you become more loved, you can use that love consumers have for your brand to drive more power for your brand. That power may be against retailers, other competitors, suppliers, media and key influencers. As well as a power over the very consumers that love your brand. With more power, a more loved Brand has 8 ways it can add profit.

In terms of pricing, you can charge premiums and any change in pricing is relatively more Inelastic. Loyal consumers, weakened channels pay premiums, and trading up where offered. More engaged employees deliver better experience—even more premiums. This gives your brand an opportunity to drive higher margins.

A more loved brand can drive market share by pushing the Momentum and finding that Tipping Point. Crowds draw crowds. Power of media (search + social + earned) keeps brand in the conversation with heavy influence. Competitors can’t respond to the momentum. You can steal share from weakened competitors who have no love, or get current users to use even more.

A more loved brand can enter new markets. Loyalists Will Follow Wherever: Loyal users will follow where brand goes, and doors will open to new ventures. The idea of brand no longer tied to product, but to how brand makes you feel.

As the brand is more loved, the P&L statement looks a lot stronger–higher markets, lower costs, higher share and new market entries all add up to much higher profitability. It’s worth finding that love.

How to get to past the Like It stage

Focus on action and drive Consideration and Purchase: stake out certain spaces in the market creating a brand story that separates your brand from the clutter. Begin to sell the solution, not just the product. Build a Bigger Following: Invest in building a brand story that helps to drive for increased popularity and get new consumers to use the brand.

Begin to Leverage those that already Love: Focus on the most loyal consumers and drive a deeper connection by driving the routine which should increase usage frequency. On top of that, begin cross selling to capture a broader type of usage.

Love the Work: It is time to dial-up the passion that goes into the marketing execution. Beloved Brands have a certain magic to them. But “Like It’ brands tend to settle for ok, rather than push for great. With better work, you’ll be able to better captivate and delight the consumers. If you don’t love the work, how do you expect the consumer to love your brand.

Fix the Leak: Brands that are stuck have something embedded in the brand or the experience that is holding back the brand. It frustrates consumers and restricts them from fully committing to making the brand a favorite. Be proactive and get the company focused on fixing this leak.

Build a Big Idea: Consumers want consistency from the brand—constant changes to the advertising, packaging or delivery can be frustrating. Leverage a Brand Story and a Big Idea that balances rational and emotional benefits helps to establish a consistency for the brand and help build a much tighter relationship.

So be content with being Liked. But just realize that you’re leaving profits behind for someone else to capture.

If you are stuck at Like It, then you are leaving money on the table

To read more abouthow the love for a brand creates more power and profits:

Other Stories You Might Like

How to Write a Creative Brief. The creative brief really comes out of two sources, the brand positioning statement and the advertising strategy that should come from the brand plan. To read how to write a Creative Brief, click on this hyperlink: How to Write a Creative Brief

How to Write a Brand Plan: The positioning statement helps frame what the brand is all about. However, the brand plan starts to make choices on how you’re going to make the most of that promise. Follow this hyperlink to read more on writing a Brand Plan: How to Write a Brand Plan

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on aBrand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming aBeloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s thisLOVEthat helps drive POWERfor your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. With added power, you will be able to drive strongerPROFITS. For a Beloved Brand, prices are inelastic and you can trade consumers up to new premium options. You can drive share and move to new markets with your loyal consumers following. And you can put pressure on costs. All these drive added profitability for the Beloved Brand. LOVE = POWER = PROFITS

The most beloved brands are based on an idea that is worth loving. It is the idea that connects the Brand with consumers. And under the Brand Idea are5 Sources of Connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including 1) the brand promise 2) the strategic choices you make 3) the brand’s ability to tell their story 4) the freshness of the product or service and 5) the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

Using the love to generate power

The 12 forces of a Beloved Brand map out how a beloved brand can leverage the power generated from being loved.

Power over consumers: A Beloved Brand with a loyal group of followers has so much more power–starting with a power over the very consumers that love them. These consumers feel more than they think–they are e-rational responding to emotional cues in the brand. They’ll pay a premium, line up in the rain for new products and follow the brand to new categories. Look at the power Starbucks has with their base of consumers, making their Starbucks moment one of their favorite rituals of the day and how consumers have now added sandwiches and wraps to those rituals. All day long, Starbucks has a line up of people ready for one of their favorite moments of their day.

Power over Porter’s 5 Forces: We can see that the love also gives Beloved Brands power over channels, substitutes, new entrants, or suppliers. With a beloved brand, there is power over channels because consumers would rather switch stores than switch brands. Apple has even created their own stores, which generate the highest sales per square foot of any retailer. And even with their own stores, Best Buy still gives Apple preferential treatment with a ‘store-in-store’ concept. With outspoken fans, they’ll even fight on behalf of the brand against competitors. Competitors can duplicate the product, but they can’t get close to duplicating the emotional connection. Beloved Brands even have power vs Suppliers, who want the beloved brand on their roster. Many suppliers will cut their prices, offer extras and first right of refusal on new technologies. In Apple’s case, Intel has given them the lead on new chip technology two years before they gave them to PC ultrabooks, giving them a huge competitive advantage. With these powers, it makes it hard for new entrants to break through.

Power over Employees: Beloved Brands have a power over employees that want to be part of the brand and the culture of the organization that all these brand fans are proud to project. People at Starbucks love working there and wear that green apron with a sense of pride. Brand fans that get hired into the system, know the culture on day 1 and will do what it takes to preserve it. Starbucks employees ooze the brand and honestly from a cultural view, their interactions make the difference in the experience of the brand. Employees have their regulars, know their name and their drink. It’s no longer just the coffee. It’s your escape and your comfort zone.

Power over the Media: Beloved Brands have a power over the Four types of Media: 1) Paid 2) Earned 3) Social and 4) Search. Beloved Brands have a much more efficient media buy–lower GRPs needed to break through and a lower Ad Spend/Sales is needed to keep share strong. Even for paid media, beloved brands get better placement, cheaper rates and they’ll be the first call for an Integration or big event such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics. Beloved Brands have figured out the earned media, with launch events, press releases and executive story lines that seep into the mainstream press. Competitors complain about Apple getting a positive media bias–they are right, they do. As brands are still figuring out social media, it’s the most loved brands that are doing it right, whether it’s Coke, Nike or Apple. Are they smarter? Maybe. But the beloved Brands have such a huge advantage because people want to connect socially, want to share and want to influence. Nike did such a great job with social media during the London Olympics that people thought they were the main shoe sponsor–when it was Adidas. Lumping earned, social and search together as ‘free’ media, Apple generates over a billion dollars of free media via the mainstream media and social media.

Power over Influencers: Beloved Brands have a power over key influencers whether it’s doctors recommending a certain drug, restaurant critics giving a positive review for the most beloved restaurant in town or electronics sales people selling a beloved TV. Each of the influencers become fans of the brand and build emotion into their recommendation. They become more outspoken in their views of the brand. And finally beloved the Beloved Brand makes its way into conversation at the lunch table or on someone’s Facebook page. The brand fans are everywhere, ready to pounce, ready to defend and ready to say “hey, you should buy the iPhone”. The conversation comes with influence as crowds follow crowds. This conversation has a second power, which creates a badge value. People know it will generate a conversation and are so proud to show it off. After all, they are in the club.

All 12 forces combine to generate power for the brand, that matches that of a monopoly.

To read more abouthow the love for a brand creates more power and profits:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

If you have been into a Starbucks the last few weeks, you’ll certainly feel the magic of the holiday season. Every Starbucks feels well-decorated but never over stated. You can smell peppermint and ginger as soon as you walk in.

If you want to add some flavor to your regular Latte, you can go for a Caramel Brûlé, Eggnog or Peppermint. And if you want to try one of the Christmas deserts, there’s Gingerbread loafs, Frosted Snowman cookies or the Cranberry Bliss Bar. Better yet, have you had one of those incredible Peppermint Brownie Cake Pops?

Starbucks came up with a 12 days of Christmas campaign that started on December 1st, which included special offers on ceramic mugs, gifts and free coffee.

When you reach the Beloved stage like Starbucks, it becomes all about the experience. While you can continue to attack yourself before others can attack you, it’s also about maintaining the love by creating a bit of magicto surprise and delight your most loyal consumers. For a brand that taps into routine, having a regular set of drinks and desserts around Christmas gives the consumers some festive favorites to liven up the routine a little bit.

From a pure business point of view, Christmas starts November 1st all the way to December 31st, which means one-sixth of your annual sales. On top of that Starbucks now has captured the entire calendar with specials around Valentines, St Patty’s day, Easter, Summer Drinks and Halloween.

To read on how to make your brand into a Beloved and Powerful brand, view the following presentation:

For all those who have followed the Beloved Brands blog, I want to thank you for reading and I want to wish you each of you Happy Holidays and I hope that you have an amazing year in 2013.

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

It is the idea that connects the Brand with consumers. Consumers connect to ideas more than just facts about your product. And under the Brand Idea are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

The best Brand Ideas start with the conquering of the Enemy of your Consumers

As people start writing positioning statements, they normally start off with some feature oriented things they do better than others. And it normally just sounds like a category feature that everyone basically does. It’s like saying a car drives. You end up with boring, undifferentiated, features that you’ve said for years. Consumers don’t care about what you do until you begin caring about consumers need.

And when Brand Leaders feel stuck I like to ask them: “who is your consumer’s enemy?” Once you answer that, you’ll see the ideas get richer. Use the attack of the enemy to generate a bigger idea which then acts as a focal point to set up your brand promise. You will start to notice that the answers get better because you are connecting with your consumer because it helps solve something in their lives. You are now in the consumers shoes.

Here’s a few examples of how it might work:

Apple: The enemy of most people who have ever turned on a computer is Frustration. Nothing ever seems to work and we end up overwhelmed and feeling incompetent. Along comes Apple who attacks Frustration by making everything so simple. Everything Apple does is about simplicity, not about technology. Apple makes me feel smarter. Apple makes it easy for anyone to download songs, edit photos or even just start using their computer on day 1, right out of the box. Taking that one step further, Apple’s brand promiseis “we make it easier to love technology, so that you can experience the future.”

Starbucks: Back in the 70’s, people loved taking a moment early in the morning to sit with their coffee and morning newspaper. Folgers made millions on the tagline “The Best Part of Waking Up is Folger’s in Your Cup”. Fast forward one generation and the new enemy is the insane hectic lives that we all live. We rush to get the kids off to school, rush to work, rush to grab a sandwich and work through lunch so we rush to every kid event that night and then slither into bed at 11:15 pm. Starbucks attacks that hectic life with and the big idea becomes a bit of “me time”. Starbucks has created a bit of an escape with a euro-flare, people who know your name, a drink customized to your own desires, a few indulgent treats and a nice leather chair to sit with your best friend. The Starbucks brand promise is “we give you a moment in your day where you can just escape and spoil yourself”

Special K: For all of us who have gained a few pounds over the years, we keep going on diets and failing over again. It’s just too difficult for us to make such a life style change. Diets are just too hard. And we are left wearing our “fat pants”. The enemy is not being able to squeeze into your favorite pair of jeans anymore. Special K came along and created the 2-week challenge to attack the enemy, offering the easiest diet that anyone can do. Just replace two meals a day with Special K and you’ll be able to lose weight. It’s that easy. The brand promise is “With the Special K Challenge, it’s a diet so easy that anyone can drop a Jean size in two weeks.”

So who is your Consumer’s Enemy? And how do you turn the attack on that enemy into a Brand Idea?

Here’s a presentation on what makes a Beloved Brand:

To read and Article on How Brand Love creates Brand Power, follow this link:Brand Love

The reason I created the Brand Love Curveis that I wanted to find a unique way to talk about the emotional bond I was seeing between brands and consumers.

I first came up with the idea when I was in charge of a Marketing department that had 20 different brands all operating at various levels of success. Honestly, it was hard for me to keep track of where each brand was and I did not want to apply one-size-fits-all type strategies to brands that had different needs. Sure I could have used some of the traditional tools such as Boston Consulting Group matrix with market share versus category growth rates, or I could have looked at various other dimensions related to revenue size, margin rates, competitive advantage or various other metrics.

The beauty of the Brand Love Curve is that it starts with the most important part of the brand: THE CONSUMER. Everything in Marketing has to start and end with the consumer in mind. It assesses the brand’s performance solely on how tightly connected consumers are with your brand. The more connected the brand, the easier it was to Market. It commanded more power and generated more profit.

When I looked at my own portfolio of brands, I started to noticed that the biggest difference was how tightly connected some brands were with their consumer. I started to refer to the poor performing brands as “indifferent” where consumers did not really care about the brand and then I called the best brands “beloved” because consumers were emotionally engaged. I started to see the difference. I could clearly see that brands with a stronger bond had it easier and that almost everything on those brands was better. Launches of new products were easier because consumers were more accepting. Retailers gave these brands preferential treatment because they knew their consumers wanted them. My own people were more excited to work on these brands, thinking it was a career advancement to get the chance to be part of the beloved brand. I could see that beloved brands had better share results, better consumer tracking scores and in many cases better margins. It was easier to get price increases through. It seemed that everyone in the organization cared about these beloved brands. My agencies bragged about the work they did on these beloved brands. As I kept exploring this idea, the idea of the Brand Love Curve came to me and I started to map where each our 20 brands sat on this hypothetical curve. As the consumer start with a new brand, they were indifferent, then they started to like it, then loved it, and finally it would become a beloved brand. The goal becomes to move along the curve towards the beloved status.

As I worked with the Brand Love Curve, I started to see the link between where the brand sat on the curve and our strategy choices available, we started to see there was a difference in the balance of rational and emotional benefits, which impacted our advertising and media planning. I could start to see how the Brand Love Curve could really drive every part of how we manage the brand. The goal became how do we move the brand along the curve because as we discussed in the previous section, if brand love helps your brand become more powerful and profitable, then any degree of added love was a good thing.

At the beloved stage, the brand becomes iconic that is famous and highly regarded with consumers.Consumers become equal to fans, similar to fans of sports teams or celebrities. They become outspoken, possessive and will defend the brand at any point. The brand becomes a self expression of the consumers, a ritual or favorite part of the day. People have conversations about these brands, whether on social media or at the lunch table. The emotional connection becomes so strong, that consumers feel more and think less. Demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become blind to pure logic and deaf to rational product based competitors. These brands have strength on every part of the robust brand funnel, near perfect awareness levels, high purchase intentions, high repeat and high loyalty. Voice of the customer is very strong, and the brand listens to ensure they are attacking any weakness before it can be exploited. The brand has a big idea, with every consumer touch point easily tying back and re-enforcing the big idea. The brand has a sense of power and uses it quietly against all stakeholders from consumers to competitors and retailers, while leveraging it with key influencers and media. The brand is driving every lever of their profit statements to continue strong sales growth and healthy margins, driving price premiums, lower costs, higher market shares and leveraging the core base of brand fans to enter new categories.

The most beloved brands we have tracked includes Apple, Starbucks, Nike, Google and Mercedes. In a sense, these brands are flawless in their strategy and execution—fully respected, desired and cherished, while wielding the power in the marketplace to create extremely profitable and valuable brands. Some of the world’s newest challengers for beloved brands status includes Uber, Whole Foods, Netflix, Beats by Dre and Tesla. Impressed by how fast they have risen in the market, but not yet flawless, only time will tell if they can survive near the top.

Staying at the top is just as hard as getting there. Just ask former beloved brands that have fallen from grace, including Blackberry, Gap Clothing, Kodak, Cadillac or Benneton.

The 5 ways that Beloved Brands fall from grace

Beloved Brands forget who they are and what it was that made them famous.Benetton is great example of a brand who forgot what made them famous. In 1990, Benetton could do no wrong. Business schools wrote case studies of their success and Ad Agencies held them up as the brand of envy for all clients to learn from. They had shock-value advertising campaigns that people talked about at the lunch table and there was a Benetton store in every mall. Their colorful and stylish fashion was the desire of the core teenage crowd. Benetton’s brand promise was providing European fashions at an affordable price. But the arrogance of the “can do no wrong” brand quickly faded. While they were so busy creating shock-value advertising and arrogantly talking of their brand as it were art itself they forgot about the fashion part of the business. Benetton started to look like a hollow promise of cool ads with not-so-cool clothing. Also, Benetton expanded so broadly and so fast, they opted for franchises instead of maintaining ownership over the distribution. The managing of the large franchise network became a drain on the company and there’s a belief that not being close to the consumers in the stores hurt their ability to listen to what teenagers were saying and wearing. With a fickle teenage target, Benetton quickly went from a must-have to a has-been brand.

Brands that struggle to keep up with the times.The Beloved Brands of General Motors–Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Corvette–not only peaked in the 1970’s, but found themselves stuck their as well. The 70’s were one of those decades with such a distinct look with Disco, perms, gold chains and the 3-piece suit, that most things connected to the 70’s were completely rejected in the 1980’s. A brand like Cadillac was the ultimate luxury brand, so revered that people would describe the best brand of any category as “it’s the Cadillac of….” but that has since been replaced by “it’s the Mercedes of…..” Cadillac’s unit sales peaked in 1973 just as gas prices began to rise and the look of those huge gas-guzzlers. It no longer fit the desires of the Yuppies of the 1980’s who were now opting for sleeker luxury with Mercedes and BMW. The Corvette brand had done a nice job transitioning from the 50’s of James Dean through the 60’s and 70’s, always remaining as an icon of sophisticated American cool. But Corvette failed to update their 1970’s brand look until 1984, which was too late to escape the stigma and giggles of those who looked at the drivers as having a “mid-life crisis”. Consumers of the 80’s were now driving smaller and sleeker sports cars like the RX7, 280Z and later on the Miata. And finally, the Oldsmobile was a classic American family car who sales soared through the 1970’s. By the mid-80’s, in an effort to try to capture a new generation, they used the infamous tagline of “Not your father’s Oldsmobile” which only re-enforced that it WAS your father’s Oldsmobile. I believe that the near-bankruptcy of General Motors can be traced back to the 1970’s when the brands peaked and yet felt stuck in a time-warp forever. GM failed to keep up in design, and failed to change as gas prices rose dramatically. They found themselves attacked on the lower end from the Japanese cars like Toyota and Honda and at the higher end from German brands like Mercedes, Porsche, Audi and BMW.

They make the wrong strategic choices because they think of themselves before the consumer.Gap Clothing got greedy and forgot what made them great: trendy American fashion for a stylish generation at a reasonable price. And who is the spokesperson for fashion: the coolest people on earth: TEENAGERS of course. Every generation of Teens believes they are the most important people on earth and they want products that speak for their generation. It’s all about them. They influence Music, Movies, TV Shows and Clothing and believe each has to speak directly to them and for them. Imagine being 15 in the late 90’s, you’re walking in your favorite mall, trying to be as cool as can be, heading for your favorite clothing store. All of a sudden, you look up and your favorite clothing brand is now flanked by BABY GAP on one side and GAP MATERNITY on the other side. How could this brand speak for the teen generation, when your 2-year-old nephews are wearing a mini-version of what you’re wearing or your pregnant Aunt is wearing the stretchy version? GAP made the mistake of putting their name on all their line extensions, which most fans of Master Brands thinks strengthens the brand but it actually runs the risk of actually weakening the brand. GAP also forgot about feeding that desire for leading edge, trendy clothing–the whole reason for that “8 seasons” rotation of inventory. Go into a GAP store this year, and you’ll realize how boring and drab the products have become. No teenager today loves GAP or even thinks much about GAP. They are totally indifferent. Fast forward to 2011, GAP Clothing sales are down 19% this year and down over 25% since the peak of 2005. They have just announced the closing of 200 stores–which will continue the downward spiral.

If you are Afraid to attack yourself, expect an attack from someone else.Kodak was such a revered brand for so long, but their refusal to attack themselves opened up so many windows of attack from others. The first attack came in the traditional film business from low-priced Fuji film. Kodak did nothing to stop Fuji for fear of eroding their margin, letting Fuji gain a 17% share of the film market. The second attack came from new entrants into the digital camera market before Kodak was ready to enter. Even though Kodak had the first digital camera as early as 1975, the product was dropped internally for fear it would threaten Kodak’s photographic film business. In 1990 Kodak finally laid out a plan to enter the digital camera market but took another decade to enter the market. The world was changing, yet Kodak executives still could not fathom a world without traditional film which gave them little incentive to deviate into the digital camera space. The third attack came once Kodak entered the digital camera space. Kodak entered at the high-end of the market and for a brief moment was the #1 digital camera. But Kodak failed to recognize how quickly the digital camera market would become commoditized. They did cut their prices, but couldn’t lower their cost of goods fast enough to keep up with the Japanese manufacturers. Kodak was losing $60 for every camera sold at the same time as their traditional film business was dying. The result: Bankruptcy. Interestingly enough, at the time of their bankruptcy, Kodak released 1000’s of patents for sale. It’s not a question of innovation that killed Kodak, it’s a refusal to act on the right innovation in a timely fashion. They failed to attack themselves only to let others attack and ultimately destroy them.

Lose focus and let the experience slide.A recent case study in a brand experience not living up to expectations is the Blackberry. It’s a classic case where they grabbed early share as the category innovator and then forgot to keep making improvements to the overall experience. The list of problems for blackberry is long: major service outages, keyboard that sticks, small screen size, bad cameras, poor quality speaker-phone, slow internet browser and when the screen freezes you have to take the battery out and re-boot. In my last few months as an angry blackberry user, I was taking the battery out 5x a day. The leaders at RIM believed they were invincible almost laughing when Apple launched the iPhone. These guys would next launch a tablet without any Apps on it. Oh man! What I think Blackberry’s biggest failure is not mapping out the customer experience and attacking every possible weakness. It’s a classic case of technology first and then thrust it into the marketplace and hope it sells. The blackberry experience has just not kept pace with Android and Apple. As a result, the RIM share price is down 95% since its peak of 2008.

Maintaining beloved brand status

Focus on maintaining the magic and love the brand has created with the core brand fans. Focus most of your attention on those who love you the most. Treat them special. Listen to your consumer, giving them a voice at the table, with the brand being responsive as it can. Market the Big Idea, sell the innovation and the experience. Continue to invest in product innovation and brand experience. Leverage both into telling the overall brand story, using the big idea to push the marketing effort in two separate layers: tell the master brand story about the big idea and the related experience, tell the specific product innovation stories linking how they support and build on the brand’s big idea.

Perfect the experience: For those who love the brand, it is no longer just about the product, it becomes about the experience. Build a culture and organization around the brand that will keep finding new ways to surprise and delight consumers. Perfect every possible touchpoint with the consumer. Attack the brand before it can be attacked by others: The biggest competitor for these brands is the brand itself. The constant goal has to be about getting better. Any degree of complacency will set the brand up for future attacks. Never become complacent or these brands will be replaced by challenger brands wanting to achieve the beloved status.

Broaden the offering and broaden the audience: Take advantage of your brand’s loyal following to launch peripheral products that build on the routine. Capture more share of wallet of your most loyal consumers.To ensure you are a brand that goes beyond the current generation of consumers, begin thinking about how to spread your brand to other age groups. A lot of fashion brands and restaurant brands have been trapped into the current generation and lose the status as styles change.

The most beloved brands must keep the love alive, attack yourself, and use your fans as spokespeople.

Here’s a presentation on what makes a Beloved Brand:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a Brand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

With each stage of the Brand Love Curve, the consumer will see your brand differently. The worst case is when consumers have “no opinion” of your brand. They just don’t care. It’s like those restaurants you stop at in the middle of no-where that are called “restaurant”. In those cases, there is no other choice so you may as well just name it restaurant. But in highly competitive markets, you survive by being liked, but you thrive by being loved. Be honest with yourself as to what stage you are at, and try to figure out how to be more loved, with a vision of getting to the Beloved Brand stage.

The most beloved brands are based on an idea that is worth loving.

It is the idea that connects the Brand with consumers. And under the Brand Idea are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

Generating Love for the Brand

The brand’s promise sets up the positioning, as you focus on a key target with one main benefit you offer. Brands need to be either better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. “Me-too” brands have a short window before being squeezed out. How relevant, simple and compelling the brand positioning is impacts the potential love for the brand.
The most beloved brands create an experience that over-delivers the promise. How your culture and organization are set up can make or break that experience. Hiring the best people, creating service values that employees can deliver against and having processes that eliminate service leakage. The culture attacks the brand’s weaknesses and fixes them before the competition can attack. With a Beloved Brand, the culture and brand become one.
Brands also make focused strategic choices that start with identifying where the brand is on the Brand Love Curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved status. Marketing is not just activity, but rather focused activity–based on strategy with an ROI mindset. Where you are on the curve might help you make strategic and tactical choices such as media, innovation and service levels.
The most beloved brands have a freshness of innovation, staying one-step ahead of the consumers. The idea of the brand helps acting as an internal beacon to help frame the R&D. Every new product has to back that idea. At Apple, every new product must deliver simplicity and at Volvo, it must focus on safety. .
Beloved brands can tell the brand story through great advertising in paid media, through earned media either in the mainstream press or through social media. Beloved Brands use each of these media choices to connect with consumers and have a bit of magic to their work.

Using Apple as an example, which is the most valuable brand on the planet, the big idea behind Apple is complexity made simple. Since every great brand tackles an enemy of the consumer, Apple takes on the frustration and intimidation that consumers have with technology. The Apple brand promise is we make it easier to love technology, so that you can experience the future no matter who you are. Apple has done an amazing job in creating products that take the most complicated of technology and deliver it so that anyone can use it. People criticize Apple for not being that leading edge of technology saying they just copy. But they don’t get what Apple is about. Whereas every other geeky computer company starts with the technology and forces consumers to figure it out, Apple takes that same technology and makes it so simple–whether that’s the iPhone iPad or the Mac which have made technology accessible for anyone. Apple knows how to tell their story, starting with the launch meeting–last week’s iPad Mini launch was covered for days in the mainstream media. You could even watch it live on-line. Apple has made great ads over the years, but they know how to work the media–whether that’s on CNN, technology magazines or through social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Apple manages the Brand Experience to perfection–starting with the excitement of launches to the helpfulness of the genius bar to the out-of-box start-up of any of the Apple products. As much excitement as Apple generates, they always seem to over-deliver. Look how giddy people get over their iPhones and iPads. All these contribute to the Love for the Apple brand and generates a loyal following.

Using the Love to Generate Power

The 12 forces of a Beloved Brand map out how a beloved brand can leverage the power generated from being loved.

A Beloved Brand with a loyal group of followers has so much more power–starting with a power over the very consumers that love them. These consumers feel more than they think–they are e-rational responding to emotional cues in the brand. They’ll pay a premium, line up in the rain for new products and follow the brand to new categories. Look at the power Starbucks has with their base of consumers, making their Starbucks moment one of their favorite rituals of the day and how consumers have now added sandwiches and wraps to those rituals. All day long, Starbucks has a line up of people ready for one of their favorite moments of their day.

Using Porter’s 5 forces, we can see that the love also gives Beloved Brands power over channels, substitutes, new entrants, or suppliers. People rather switch stores than switch brands. Apple has even created their own stores, which generate the highest sales per square foot of any retailer. These brand fans are outspoken against competitors and suppliers will do what it takes to be part of the brand. In Apple’s case, Intel has given them the lead on new chip technology.

Beloved Brands have a power over employees that want to be part of the brand and the culture of the organization that all these brand fans are proud to project. People at Starbucks love working there and wear that green apron with a sense of pride. Brand fans know the culture on day 1 and do what it takes to preserve it.

Beloved Brands have a power over the media whether that’s paid, earned, social or search media. Apple generates over a billion dollars of free media via the mainstream media and social media. Competitors complain about Apple getting a positive media bias–they are right, they do. Even for paid media,beloved brands get better placement, cheaper rates and they’ll be the first call for an Integration or big event such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics. Nike did such a great job with social media during the London Olympics that people thought they were the main shoe sponsor–when it was Adidas.

Beloved Brands have a power over key influencers whether it’s doctors recommending Lipitor, restaurant critics giving a positive review for the most beloved restaurant in town or Best Buy sales people selling a Samsung TV. They each become fans of the brand and build emotion into their recommendation. They become more outspoken in their views of the brand. And finally beloved the Beloved Brand makes its way into conversation at the lunch table or on someone’s Facebook page. The brand fans are everywhere, ready to pounce, ready to defend and ready to say “hey, you should buy the iPhone”. The conversation comes with influence as crowds follow crowds. This conversation has a second power, which creates a badge value. People know it will generate a conversation and are so proud to show it off. After all, they are in the club. All twelve of these forces combine to generate further power for the brand.

Using the Love and Power to generate Profits

With all the love and power the Beloved Brand has generated for itself, now is the time to translate that into growth, profit and value. The Beloved Brand has an Inelastic Price. The loyal brand fans pay a 20-30% price premium and the weakened channels cave to give deeper margins. We will see how inelastic Apple’s price points are with the new iPad Mini. Consumers are willing to trade up to the best model. The more engaged employees begin to generate an even better brand experience. For instance at Starbucks, employees know the names of their most loyal of customers. Blind taste tests show consumers prefer the cheaper McDonald’s coffee but still pay 4x as much for a Starbucks. So is it still coffee you’re buying?

A well-run Beloved Brand can use their efficiency to lower their cost structure. Not only can they use their growth to drive economies of scale, but suppliers will cut their cost just to be on the roster of a Beloved Brand. They will benefit from the free media through earned, social and search media. They may even find government offer subsidies to be in the community or partners willing to lower their costs to be part of the brand. For instance, a real estate owner would likely give lower costs and better locations to McDonald’s than an indifferent brand.

Beloved Brands have momentum they can turn into share gains. Crowds draw crowds which spreads the base of the loyal consumers. Putting name Disney on a movie generates a crowd at the door on day 1. Competitors can’t compete–lower margins means less investment back into the brand. It’s hard for them to fight the Beloved Brand on the emotional basis leaving them to a niche that’s currently unfulfilled.

Beloved Brands can enter into new categories knowing their loyal consumers will follow because they buy into the Idea of the Brand. The idea is no longer tied to the product or service but rather how it makes you feel about yourself. Nike is all about winning, whether that’s in running shoes, athletic gear or even golf equipment.

The formula for a Beloved Brand is simple: Beloved = Power = Growth = Profit

Apple has been able to take all the love they generate with consumers and transform it into a power that they’ve been able to drive into their P&L, with 25-fold gains in revenue, increases in gross margins and can move all their ratios into the right space. As a result, Apple is now the most valuable company in the world.

How loved is your brand?

We believe a brand’s source of power is the emotional feelings it generates. With that power comes added profitability.

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a Brand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand. With the power of connection, the brand can leverage that power into increased growth and profits. To read more, follow this presentation.

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

We offer brand coaching, where we promise to make your brand better by listening to the issues, providing advice that challenges you, and coaching you along a strategic pathway to reaching your brand’s full potential. For our brand leader training, we promise to make your team of brand leaders better, by teaching sound marketing fundamentals and challenging to push for greatness so that they can unleash their full potential. Feel free to add me on Linked In, or follow me on Twitter at @belovedbrands If you need to contact me, email me at graham@beloved-brands.com or phone me at 416 885 3911

Contact Information

Subscribe to the Beloved Brands Blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.